Wednesday, February 28, 2007

2-28

Frame or a story within a story
*the frame just distances us from the story

The Symposium is about love

philla- love
sophia - wisdom
*philosophy is the love of wisdom

Phaedrus - rhetorician
Pausanias - lawyer
Eryximachus - doctor
Aristophanes - comic playwright
Agathon - tragic playwright

Aristophanes was supposed to go before Eryximachus but because Aristophanes had the hiccups, they switched turns and the good doctor gave him several ideas on how to get ride of his hiccups.

lover - erastes - older male - can't control themselves
beloved - eromenos - young boy - can't control the lover

The relationship between the two males doesn't create any issues. Issues meaning children.

aesthetic - beauty

Socrates on the physical level is the erastes
Alcibiades on the spiritual level is the erastes
Pandemos (physical love) vs. Urania (spiritual love)

Dr. Sexson shared with the class a very life changing conversation with us between himself and a lady he sat next to on a plane ride home. Along with the Eleusinian Mysteries this woman followed the idea of something said, something done and something shown.

*What she said: I just wanted to please you.

*What she did: gave him a package that still sits on his book self unopened

*What she showed: the inked numbers on her left wrist


Tuesday, February 27, 2007

2-26

The Symposium is patriarchal...NO GIRLS ALLOWED, they even sent away the flute girls before they started the discussion

The Symposium is an example of dialectic philosophy because it can't all be completely trusted, it is a composed frame story.

We never see the real thing until we are educated, until then we are just seeing forms....sound familiar?
Plato's Allegory of the Cave suggests the idea of living life by just seeing shadows. In class we made the connection to the Matrix or a movie theater, so i guess the extreme would be if you are watching the matrix in a movie theater. The movie theater is just a modern day cave for Plato, people go into a dark room and sit and stare at shadows on a wall...interesting

Raconteur - is a story teller

"I don't want to talk about it" as the beginning of a story just adds to the drama

Sheherazade - was mentioned in class about telling stories to save her life. The description of her on Wiki closely reminded me of the lady that Dr. Sexson met on the plane....very interesting and worth taking a quick look.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

2-16

The blogs to check out for the test are
*Elizabeth
*Brittini
*Jan
*Amanda

Don't forget to bring a question to class on Tuesday that you think should be on the test Friday

Dithyrambos - Dionysus
*God of the Double Doors

The mythos (or story) of Antigone is used by Sophocles to make the tragic drama of Antigone. The story that everyone knew went under a metamorphosis by Sophocles to become a dramatic, creative story.

Tiresias - sees the world as both a male and a female because he had lived and experienced life as both

Senex - old men
an example is Tiresias and Creon

The messenger only comes in to deliver bad news and often their description is of scene of graphic violence

Hearing vs showing
*hearing is your own interpretation, they are sparking your imagination and describing a scene but each individual paints a different picture
*showing is someones else interpretation, nothing is left to the imagination

Mistakes are a great thing because they take you somewhere you hadn't anticipated.





Friday, February 16, 2007

2-14







In honor of Valentines Day we spent some of the class period talking about Aphrodite (aka Venus) and Eros (aka cupid)





Cupid today is just the watered down version of Eros







Aphrodite is the goddess of love


Eros is the god of love




Aphrodite Urania
*goddess of pure (platonic) spiritual love

Aphrodite Pandemos
*goddess of physical love

Both Eros and Aphrodite have the power to make you weak in the knees

Psyche means soul and the visual representation of psyche (and soul) is a butterfly












Whippersnapper - Dr. Sexson said he could never figure out where the term came from and it looks like it dates all the back to 1674. Check out this link if you want the definition.


"it is the best never to have been born at all, next to die young, and that old age is the worst that can befall a man" pg 243 in Steiner - know for the test







Sunday, February 11, 2007

2-9

[stich]o[mythia] ....meaining row speech

The rape and abduction of Persephone was a good thing because it woke her and took her out of her daze. It opened her to the ideas of death.

If you missed class on Friday you missed Elizabeth (as Antigone) and Megan (as Ismene) and Mick (as Creon) and Dr. Sexson (as the chorus) reinacting lines 497-580. It was very intertaing and gave a lot of clarity and humor to thoes lines!

Hubris - pride

en-theos means the god is inside you
enthusiastic

gods can never take back something after they have promised it

the Furies are the goddesses of the underworld

Antigone is very connected with the gods of the underworld.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

2-7

Homework:
*look around at everyone's blog and find at least one to post a comment on.
*find a single page in Steiner and do a close reading
*pick one of the five categories listed in the pages of 231-277 of Steiner.
-man and woman pg.234
-young and old pg. 242
-individual and society pg.247
-living and dead pg. 263
-mean and god(s) pg. 266

Antigone was only 13

Can you guess who Charles Dickens was obsessed with....Little Red Riding Hood

Look at Carly's blog if you want to check out a great link for Hegel.

You don't have to ban books you just have to create a distraction. Television has done wonders for keeping people away from books.

The word myth comes from the word mythos which means story. So when people ask "what's the story" they are really asking "what's the myth"

Both tragedy and comedy are all in the family

Monday, February 5, 2007

2-5


Comedy - Hermes
Tragedy - Demeter

sparagmos - the tearing of living flesh

polytropic- the trickster, Hermes

metempsychosis - the transformation of one soul into the body of another...nothing every dies,
only changes

Hermes is the guide of souls, takes the souls after death into the underworld

Hermes: Don't things to seriously...everything can be laughed at if you just step back an reevaluate